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The first and most complete authoritative book on the history and evolution of fiat currency notes throughout history. This book is based on ten years of research and over 800 volumes reviewed. Covers period from the invention of paper money and the first issues in China in 1024 AD to the present-day. Filled with never-before-compiled personal accounts of experiences with fiat paper money.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

In these current times (2010) when currency wars are looming, this book can act as a convincer to protect yourself. Curreny collapse has happened many times in the past and this book rams this home. It provides a mass of historical evidence which is most interesting and not readily available elsewhere.I dabble in the stock market and this book provides another arrow in my quiver of knowledge to help foresee what is coming.Fully recommended.John Allen. Australia

An excellent historical review of fiat money from the early Chinese empires through present times. Thoroughly researched and cited throughout, the book details the earliest attempts at using currencies with values set by fiat. The author meticulously details the lifecycles of currencies from ancient times through the present day.

All fiat currencies have a common story -- what starts out as a receipt for something of actual value becomes debased through fractional reserve banking and excess money and credit generation. This leads to an illusory economic boom, followed inexorably by a collapse -- the fiat currency becomes worthless through deficit spending and excess issuing. Anyone holding it at the end loses everything.

This book will do more to preserve your wealth than 1000 financial and investing guides combined.

Foster's thorough review of fiat paper money throughout history will convince even the habitually undecided to trade their paper currencies for gold or silver as soon as possible. This book is an 11 on a scale of 10. Ralph T. Foster has done us all a favor.

This book ought to be mandatory reading at the high school level. If there is any book that should be read, it's this book! It explains what money truly is, which is a shared belief that a certain pattern of ink on a special type of paper, is actually worth something. When that belief is weakened, or vanishes entirely, then that paper becomes exactly what it's worth, mere ink on a piece of paper, worth no more or less than any other piece of paper with ink. And paper is very, very common unlike other assets that are actually worth something due to a real genuine scarcity or industrial use.

The book then goes on to talk about how governments ultimately end up making a fiat currency worth less through time, to the point of the currency becoming worthless.

Read this book! It will impact your life more than any book Oprah could recommend.

But people do not remember. Most of us grew up believing that paper money is the modern way of doing things, and specie is for barbarians. Well, read this book, and see if you still think that.

The author is a coin dealer, so the book is also interested in the more numismatic aspects (aesthetic aspects of the banknotes, printing methodology, etc -- apparently B. Franklin invented the first precursor of the hologram in the current dollar bill, who knew?)

The book is clearly produced at Kinko's, but that shouldn't be held against the author -- apparently he has had difficulty finding publishing interest in the US (although he tells me the book is very popular in Europe).

I learned more about the "history of the world" than in all my years of school. It let me see the "big picture" through the financial lens of "money" and how it affects every aspect of society. It's almost like a study in human behavior, a glimpse of where we've been and probably where we're headed. Thank God someone is out there putting this information together and opening our eyes. Absolutely the only "money" book you need. It's like you've bitten fruit from the tree of knowledge. Once you've read this book you will basically know all there is to know, seriously. Should be taught in school.

This book is required reading, period. If you want to understand the doomed and illogical basis for modern currencies, this is the book you must read. The U.S. dollar, the Euro, the yen, and all other major currencies are based solely on faith, and that faith is being stretched by the day. Currencies have collapsed hundreds of times in recorded history for exactly the same reasons that modern currencies are destabilized. Read this book now if you want to understand what is about to happen to the world's economic system.